The Bookends Reviewhttp://thebookendsreview.com
an independent creative arts journalFri, 18 Aug 2017 04:01:39 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.1http://thebookendsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/cropped-open-magazine-32x32.pngThe Bookends Reviewhttp://thebookendsreview.com
3232112213062She Only Wishes For, And Only Gets, Fivehttp://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/18/wishes-gets-five/
http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/18/wishes-gets-five/#respondFri, 18 Aug 2017 04:01:39 +0000http://thebookendsreview.com/?p=7839Twelve days after Christmas, prowling the attic for her mother’s prescription pills, Melanie finds beneath the toolbox a prescription bottle filled with finishing nails. Apparently, Ativan and carpentry were so last year. She shakes the bottle, creating a manufactured hailstorm. The noise brings clarification to her New Year’s resolution to hang clothes on her bedroom walls—except for space above the headboard plastered with a 20×40 poster of Tom Selleck’s hairy-chest. She fills the inaugural wall with black pantyhose, a blue bra and lace panties, a gray mini skirt, and a zebra-print blouse and belt. Finding a new way to get high until an old high is reinstated is still a type of high. Ah-ha moment number one.

“Where’d you get the money for the clothes?” her mother asks.

“You have your secrets and I have mine.”

“On that, we’re in agreement.”

On Valentine’s Day, after vomiting sixteen boxes of candy hearts in the backyard, Melanie uncovers from beneath an arborvitae a sandwich baggie laced with Percocet, Cyclobenzaprine, Codeine, and Vicodin. She binges for a week. She blacks out on the mattress on Saturday morning and has her stomach pumped at Regions Hospital on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday morning she’s admitted to rehab where she convinces herself that life, like twenty-eight days of sobriety, sucks.…

]]>Twelve days after Christmas, prowling the attic for her mother’s prescription pills, Melanie finds beneath the toolbox a prescription bottle filled with finishing nails. Apparently, Ativan and carpentry were so last year. She shakes the bottle, creating a manufactured hailstorm. The noise brings clarification to her New Year’s resolution to hang clothes on her bedroom walls—except for space above the headboard plastered with a 20×40 poster of Tom Selleck’s hairy-chest. She fills the inaugural wall with black pantyhose, a blue bra and lace panties, a gray mini skirt, and a zebra-print blouse and belt. Finding a new way to get high until an old high is reinstated is still a type of high. Ah-ha moment number one.

“Where’d you get the money for the clothes?” her mother asks.

“You have your secrets and I have mine.”

“On that, we’re in agreement.”

On Valentine’s Day, after vomiting sixteen boxes of candy hearts in the backyard, Melanie uncovers from beneath an arborvitae a sandwich baggie laced with Percocet, Cyclobenzaprine, Codeine, and Vicodin. She binges for a week. She blacks out on the mattress on Saturday morning and has her stomach pumped at Regions Hospital on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday morning she’s admitted to rehab where she convinces herself that life, like twenty-eight days of sobriety, sucks.…

RW Spryszak is Editor-at-Large at Thrice Publishing and managing editor of Thrice Fiction, both of which are based out of the Chicago area. Thrice Fiction is published three times a year, and Thrice also publishes up to two novels a year. He has been published in Slipstream, The Lost and Found Times, Peculiar Mormyrid, and a host of other alternative magazines since the 1980s. He was editor of The Fiction Review in 1990-1991.

Please describe your website/social media:

I am trying to adapt my old-school notions to the modern era. The magazine website offers free copies for every issue (or you can buy a hard copy there). My personal website is pretty basic.

What is your average day as editor/writer:

Because Thrice is an indie, and we have yet to qualify for grants; it is strictly a labor of love right now. So, I have a straight job that pays the bills. I write every day in some fashion, and always have a project going. For the magazine, I go by deadlines and concentrate down on that when they loom.

Tell us about your career:

I started out in Marjorie Peters’ Southside Writers Workshop in the 70’s and attended Columbia Chicago.…

RW Spryszak is Editor-at-Large at Thrice Publishing and managing editor of Thrice Fiction, both of which are based out of the Chicago area. Thrice Fiction is published three times a year, and Thrice also publishes up to two novels a year. He has been published in Slipstream, The Lost and Found Times, Peculiar Mormyrid, and a host of other alternative magazines since the 1980s. He was editor of The Fiction Review in 1990-1991.

Please describe your website/social media:

I am trying to adapt my old-school notions to the modern era. The magazine website offers free copies for every issue (or you can buy a hard copy there). My personal website is pretty basic.

What is your average day as editor/writer:

Because Thrice is an indie, and we have yet to qualify for grants; it is strictly a labor of love right now. So, I have a straight job that pays the bills. I write every day in some fashion, and always have a project going. For the magazine, I go by deadlines and concentrate down on that when they loom.

Tell us about your career:

I started out in Marjorie Peters’ Southside Writers Workshop in the 70’s and attended Columbia Chicago.…

]]>http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/16/interview-w-rw-spryszak/feed/07851Don’t Tellhttp://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/14/dont-tell/
http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/14/dont-tell/#respondMon, 14 Aug 2017 04:01:25 +0000http://thebookendsreview.com/?p=7822The alarm’s shriek drills through my skull, a plastic-wrapped headache ready to go five mornings a week. I knew before I went to bed that today is going to be shit. Hell, knew a week ago that today is going to be shit. Hitting the snooze button is a nine-minute relief.

I shrug on a pair of jeans, the least worn hoodie. The box of crackers is still beside my bed from where I pretended to be sick instead of going to class. An avalanche of ignored homework spills across the surface of my dresser. The black and white of topographic maps, pictures of fossils, and a chart of the geologic time periods. A bottle of weak hydrochloric acid and rock samples top the pile, evidence of college major number two-going-on-three-and-counting.

I start my morning by pissing, washing my hands in cold water with generic soap. Splashing water on my face to wipe away the sweat of the latest nightmare. I dislodge my makeup bag from the sink cabinet clutter, slather on a layer of Target’s palest foundation, swab coffee-colored dust on my eyelids. My eyes reflect beneath the streaked and toothpaste-splattered mirror.

“Oh great,” I mumble to my reflection. Of course, I would notice today. …

]]>The alarm’s shriek drills through my skull, a plastic-wrapped headache ready to go five mornings a week. I knew before I went to bed that today is going to be shit. Hell, knew a week ago that today is going to be shit. Hitting the snooze button is a nine-minute relief.

I shrug on a pair of jeans, the least worn hoodie. The box of crackers is still beside my bed from where I pretended to be sick instead of going to class. An avalanche of ignored homework spills across the surface of my dresser. The black and white of topographic maps, pictures of fossils, and a chart of the geologic time periods. A bottle of weak hydrochloric acid and rock samples top the pile, evidence of college major number two-going-on-three-and-counting.

I start my morning by pissing, washing my hands in cold water with generic soap. Splashing water on my face to wipe away the sweat of the latest nightmare. I dislodge my makeup bag from the sink cabinet clutter, slather on a layer of Target’s palest foundation, swab coffee-colored dust on my eyelids. My eyes reflect beneath the streaked and toothpaste-splattered mirror.

“Oh great,” I mumble to my reflection. Of course, I would notice today. …

]]>http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/14/dont-tell/feed/07822Boxes in Heavenhttp://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/11/boxes-in-heaven/
http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/11/boxes-in-heaven/#respondFri, 11 Aug 2017 04:01:07 +0000http://thebookendsreview.com/?p=7806She did up her curls and fastened them with a golden comb, then sprinkled the Christmas tree with festive strands of silver. Chipping away at sticky tape with her fingernail, she unwrapped a box that she guessed might have been placed there thirty years before. When it was finally opened, the ghastly, withered fingers of a familiar hand reached out and plucked the comb from her hair—the curls coming undone one by one, and framing her bright eyes, which danced with shivering excitement. Without warning, the same hand reached out and grabbed her fingers, crushing and draining them of blood, until they turned white with surrender. Once the grip had slackened, her lips started to move, but her voice stayed deep down in her throat.

‘I’ve been waiting for your touch for a very long time—waiting for your embrace to smother my shadow.’

The hand caressed her cheek, then tugged at her curls, but she pulled away, leaving a handful of hair in its tightly-wrapped fist. Never-ending swirls of wrapping paper danced at her feet, and suddenly off balance, she fell onto another box—one trimmed in glittering red and knotted white ribbon. Cutting through the tangled bows, she sliced into a sliver of fingertip.…

]]>She did up her curls and fastened them with a golden comb, then sprinkled the Christmas tree with festive strands of silver. Chipping away at sticky tape with her fingernail, she unwrapped a box that she guessed might have been placed there thirty years before. When it was finally opened, the ghastly, withered fingers of a familiar hand reached out and plucked the comb from her hair—the curls coming undone one by one, and framing her bright eyes, which danced with shivering excitement. Without warning, the same hand reached out and grabbed her fingers, crushing and draining them of blood, until they turned white with surrender. Once the grip had slackened, her lips started to move, but her voice stayed deep down in her throat.

‘I’ve been waiting for your touch for a very long time—waiting for your embrace to smother my shadow.’

The hand caressed her cheek, then tugged at her curls, but she pulled away, leaving a handful of hair in its tightly-wrapped fist. Never-ending swirls of wrapping paper danced at her feet, and suddenly off balance, she fell onto another box—one trimmed in glittering red and knotted white ribbon. Cutting through the tangled bows, she sliced into a sliver of fingertip.…

Tom Perrotta’s latest novel, Mrs. Fletcher, involves a lot of porn and sexual adventure, but that’s not to say it’s lacking in heart. Beneath the more sensational parts of the book is a story about embracing the fluidity of your identity and giving yourself the freedom to change.

The first part of the novel cuts between the titular character of Eve Fletcher—a single mother in her mid-forties—and her son Brendan during a major transitory period in both of their lives. Brendan leaves home for his first year of college, and Eve is alone for the first time. In her son’s absence, she is left to reexamine her choices. Her newfound independence becomes the impetus for her awakening sexually, intellectually, and socially. Specifically, she becomes transfixed by lesbian porn sites and starts seeing the scenes of her life through the lens of porn scenarios. This leads her to sign up for a Gender and Society course at the local community college, as well as question aspects of her identity she once thought were fixed.

Meanwhile, Brendan envisioned that college would just be about parties, drinking, and hooking up with girls. After a few weeks there, though, his fantasy begins to fall apart; he finds that students at his university aren’t willing to entertain the misogynistic behavior he got away with in high school.…

Tom Perrotta’s latest novel, Mrs. Fletcher, involves a lot of porn and sexual adventure, but that’s not to say it’s lacking in heart. Beneath the more sensational parts of the book is a story about embracing the fluidity of your identity and giving yourself the freedom to change.

The first part of the novel cuts between the titular character of Eve Fletcher—a single mother in her mid-forties—and her son Brendan during a major transitory period in both of their lives. Brendan leaves home for his first year of college, and Eve is alone for the first time. In her son’s absence, she is left to reexamine her choices. Her newfound independence becomes the impetus for her awakening sexually, intellectually, and socially. Specifically, she becomes transfixed by lesbian porn sites and starts seeing the scenes of her life through the lens of porn scenarios. This leads her to sign up for a Gender and Society course at the local community college, as well as question aspects of her identity she once thought were fixed.

Meanwhile, Brendan envisioned that college would just be about parties, drinking, and hooking up with girls. After a few weeks there, though, his fantasy begins to fall apart; he finds that students at his university aren’t willing to entertain the misogynistic behavior he got away with in high school.…

]]>sun’s steady breaths ink openthe first paragraphs of another day.shoes crunch across the glassfrom a departed car window,drunks stumblingto find direction or peacewhile the city rubs its eyesclear of disbelief.

]]>http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/07/june-morning/feed/07800Above the Waterhttp://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/04/above-the-water/
http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/04/above-the-water/#respondFri, 04 Aug 2017 04:01:04 +0000http://thebookendsreview.com/?p=7785The wind is in the dry leaves all day
It must be someone’s disappearing life.

I heard we can be seen up there,
Minutes after death,

The flickering light of what we will become
Tied to the ghosts of past and passing,

Julia Tagliere is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Writer and Hay & Forage Grower magazines and online at Buzzle; in various anthologies, including Here in the Middle: Stories of Love, Loss, and Connection from the Ones Sandwiched in between, Candlesticks and Daggers—An Anthology of Mixed Genre Mysteries, and in the juried photography and prose collection Love + Lust. Her short story, “Te Absolvo,” was named Best Short Story in the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition. Julia currently resides in Maryland with her family, where she recently completed her M.A. in Fiction Writing at Johns Hopkins University. Look for more of Julia’s work in the forthcoming anthology The Way to My Heart—An Anthology of Food-Related Romance, Issue 61 (August 2017) of Potomac Review, or at her blog/website.

In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Tagliere about publishing, fiction subgenres, music, and even the importance of the 2017 Wonder Woman film, among other things.

Julia Tagliere is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Writer and Hay & Forage Grower magazines and online at Buzzle; in various anthologies, including Here in the Middle: Stories of Love, Loss, and Connection from the Ones Sandwiched in between, Candlesticks and Daggers—An Anthology of Mixed Genre Mysteries, and in the juried photography and prose collection Love + Lust. Her short story, “Te Absolvo,” was named Best Short Story in the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition. Julia currently resides in Maryland with her family, where she recently completed her M.A. in Fiction Writing at Johns Hopkins University. Look for more of Julia’s work in the forthcoming anthology The Way to My Heart—An Anthology of Food-Related Romance, Issue 61 (August 2017) of Potomac Review, or at her blog/website.

In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Tagliere about publishing, fiction subgenres, music, and even the importance of the 2017 Wonder Woman film, among other things.

]]>http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/08/02/cover-cover-julia-tagliere-author-editor/feed/07789Color Blindhttp://thebookendsreview.com/2017/07/31/color-blind/
http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/07/31/color-blind/#commentsMon, 31 Jul 2017 04:01:10 +0000http://thebookendsreview.com/?p=7778When Lacie was three, she swallowed her mother’s mood ring. In spite of ipecac syrup, copious quantities of laxatives, and even a hospital visit, the ring never reappeared. Eighteen now, Lacie imagined it illuminating her belly with the changing colors of her moods, or perhaps, even, controlling them.

The surprise of the chicks, scratching now at the fresh, fragrant mulch, made her feel yellow, worked where nothing else had that week—not the azure waves lapping at her feet, not the briny breeze, not the posh beachfront resort, the skin-clearing sun, or even her first (legal) passion fruit daiquiri. No, until Lacie, walking well ahead of the others, stumbled upon the clutch of tiny black and lemon-yellow chicks cheeping and chirping and scrabbling after their coal-black mama, ring around the rosie through the resort’s pristine flower beds, the mood ring somewhere in her belly glowed a constant, peevish vermilion, one shade shy of Veruca Salt red.

A phase, Dad said, consulting his phone. Ungrateful, Mom hissed, grinding her teeth. Separation prep, Grandma coughed out in a cloud of illicit Newport smoke. Bitch, said her younger brothers, when they thought she couldn’t hear them.

Lacie knew she wasn’t a bitch. She just hated the beach and said so, hated everything about this trip, this stupid, fake, aren’t-we-just-one-big-happy-family-sending-our-daughter-off-to-college-in-style bullshit.…

]]>When Lacie was three, she swallowed her mother’s mood ring. In spite of ipecac syrup, copious quantities of laxatives, and even a hospital visit, the ring never reappeared. Eighteen now, Lacie imagined it illuminating her belly with the changing colors of her moods, or perhaps, even, controlling them.

The surprise of the chicks, scratching now at the fresh, fragrant mulch, made her feel yellow, worked where nothing else had that week—not the azure waves lapping at her feet, not the briny breeze, not the posh beachfront resort, the skin-clearing sun, or even her first (legal) passion fruit daiquiri. No, until Lacie, walking well ahead of the others, stumbled upon the clutch of tiny black and lemon-yellow chicks cheeping and chirping and scrabbling after their coal-black mama, ring around the rosie through the resort’s pristine flower beds, the mood ring somewhere in her belly glowed a constant, peevish vermilion, one shade shy of Veruca Salt red.

A phase, Dad said, consulting his phone. Ungrateful, Mom hissed, grinding her teeth. Separation prep, Grandma coughed out in a cloud of illicit Newport smoke. Bitch, said her younger brothers, when they thought she couldn’t hear them.

Lacie knew she wasn’t a bitch. She just hated the beach and said so, hated everything about this trip, this stupid, fake, aren’t-we-just-one-big-happy-family-sending-our-daughter-off-to-college-in-style bullshit.…

]]>http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/07/31/color-blind/feed/17778Insomnia and Desirehttp://thebookendsreview.com/2017/07/28/insomnia-and-desire/
http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/07/28/insomnia-and-desire/#respondFri, 28 Jul 2017 04:01:34 +0000http://thebookendsreview.com/?p=7772You stay in bed for sixteen hours. When you wake up it is night, and you notice a strange sensation in your upper lip. Prickle prickle push. You examine the skin of your upper lip in a mirror and discover the bristle-like beginnings of three white hairs on each side of your philtrum. The hairs are unusually stiff and sleek. You continue over the next few days to watch the hairs grow progressively longer at night, then recede entirely in the daytime, and to notice other changes. Your incisors become pointy. The pupils in your eyes change shape. By the 5th day your bones are dislocating themselves, popping out of sockets from shrinking suddenly, head hair receding into your scalp and everywhere else hair sprouting like grass. By the 7th day your nightly transformations have you turned into an ordinary stripped grey domestic cat, indistinguishable from any natural-born full-time 24-hour cat. Since the transformations only take place when your lover is asleep, these changes in you have not yet been noticed. You exit the bedroom through the window, across the porch roof, down the tree, and away. You go out every night and watch scenes play out in the lighted windows of houses. …

]]>You stay in bed for sixteen hours. When you wake up it is night, and you notice a strange sensation in your upper lip. Prickle prickle push. You examine the skin of your upper lip in a mirror and discover the bristle-like beginnings of three white hairs on each side of your philtrum. The hairs are unusually stiff and sleek. You continue over the next few days to watch the hairs grow progressively longer at night, then recede entirely in the daytime, and to notice other changes. Your incisors become pointy. The pupils in your eyes change shape. By the 5th day your bones are dislocating themselves, popping out of sockets from shrinking suddenly, head hair receding into your scalp and everywhere else hair sprouting like grass. By the 7th day your nightly transformations have you turned into an ordinary stripped grey domestic cat, indistinguishable from any natural-born full-time 24-hour cat. Since the transformations only take place when your lover is asleep, these changes in you have not yet been noticed. You exit the bedroom through the window, across the porch roof, down the tree, and away. You go out every night and watch scenes play out in the lighted windows of houses. …